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by Anne Stickney 
Feb 8th 2012 at 4:00PM
Blizzard's policy as far as reporting players has been about the same since day one. If you have a problem with a player, you report them. While Blizzard can contact you and thank you for reporting the issue, it will not give any details regarding what it has done about the problem being reported. This has always been understandable to me; in the many years on and off that I worked customer service and call center jobs, rule #1 was that you did not speak to anyone but an account holder regarding the status of their account. To me, the Blizzard policy is just more of the same kind of treatment -- Blizzard cannot tell you about actions taken against another player's account, because hey, their account isn't yours, you know? It's private information.
That said, I have reported my share of players over the years, and I never really knew if action was taken against these players or not. In simple cases of name violations, like using an inappropriate word for guild or character name, I could usually tell if something had been done, because the guild or player in question would have their name changed. But in cases of player harassment ... well, you never know if they've been told anything or not. You just sort of hope this means the person harassing you will go away and that will be the end of it, but there are absolutely no guarantees.
That said, I have reported my share of players over the years, and I never really knew if action was taken against these players or not. In simple cases of name violations, like using an inappropriate word for guild or character name, I could usually tell if something had been done, because the guild or player in question would have their name changed. But in cases of player harassment ... well, you never know if they've been told anything or not. You just sort of hope this means the person harassing you will go away and that will be the end of it, but there are absolutely no guarantees.
WoW has had its share of jerks over the years, whether it was people who ninja looted gear, players who deliberately stirred up drama, players who used GearScore to measure another player's validity, players who used Recount to rub higher DPS numbers in other players' faces -- the list goes on and on. WoW has also had its share of unsavory people who are out there simply to make another person's life miserable, whether it's because of some bizarre sense of entitlement, a personal vendetta, or just the urge to be as obnoxious as possible in a social environment where, presumably, nobody will catch you.
What's odd, though, is that the premise of player accountability isn't one that is foreign to WoW. In vanilla, players were sequestered on different servers, and each server had a fairly tight-knit community of sorts. The one thing you could count on with these servers is that just like any small town neighborhood, people talked. If someone did something reprehensible to the server at large, that person was immediately excluded from raids, guilds, instance runs, and just about anything that could be deemed a social activity. In short, they were shunned -- and back then, you couldn't pay to change your name or transfer servers. If you messed up, you either apologized and tried to make up for what you did, or you started over on another server at level 1.
On the one hand, it makes a strange sort of sense -- pull from a larger playerbase, and you're never going to have a repeat offender or a case of extreme harassment, generally speaking. On the other hand, this system inadvertently lets players get away with bad behavior and gives them free license to continue being jerks whenever and where ever they see fit. Why not? It's not like anyone's going to bother to report them.
This is one of those odd little conundrums that doesn't really have an easy answer. Do we sacrifice the ease and flexibility of things like the Dungeon Finder and the Raid Finder so that we can go back to that state of self-policing? Do we throw up our hands and just let the offensive players continue to be offensive? Or, as Pugnacious Priest pondered, do we adopt a system like the one that LoL is undertaking and let the players judge for themselves who is right and who is wrong?
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
eel5pe Feb 8th 2012 5:09PM
I also would not like to see such a system, but not for the reasons some people have posted. I don't necessarily think a peer judgement system would automatically lead to an outbreak of douchebaggery. If you think about it, the vast majority of players you meet in WoW are quiet and competent. If they implemented a reactive system like in LoL where you get increased clout the more often you make the "right" decision, I think it would rapidly sift out the undesirables and you would be left with the majority of players who would try to be fair-minded.
However, there is still a major problem with a public accountability system, and that's that the vast majority of people are not well-educated about official Blizzard's policies.
No, the profanity filter and the First Amendment does not allow you to curse wildly in trade chat (read the ToS).
No, the guy who rolled on something he already had isn't a ninja looter (though he is a tool).
No, the 85 rogue who camped your level 14 paladin for half an hour on a PvP realm isn't doing anything wrong (though he is an ass.)
But if you drop into the Customer Service (and other) forums, you'll see many, many threads of players expressing misinformed outrage about the topics I listed (and many others). I'm not sure I would want them judging my fate.
The Wanderer Feb 9th 2012 6:37PM
"No, the 85 rogue who camped your level 14 paladin for half an hour on a PvP realm isn't doing anything wrong (though he is an ass.)"
He may not be doing anything against the Terms of Service (and thus probably not anything actionable), but he certainly *is* doing something wrong.
PvP realm or no, griefing is never acceptable.
eel5pe Feb 9th 2012 11:39PM
And this is exactly why a "jury of your peers" would never work. According to you it's griefing, in my book (and Blizzard's) it's acceptable behavior (even if I wouldn't do it myself).
The Wanderer Feb 10th 2012 6:05PM
(I'd give you a thumbs-up for that, but those never seem to work for me for some reason. I've probably got some needed scripts blocked.)
Actually, I think we can probably both agree that griefing is never acceptable; we probably just disagree on what constitutes griefing.
By my definition, the defining element of griefing is "preventing other people from enjoying the game" - and, specifically, doing that intentionally. Corpse-camping almost always qualifies; attacking a low-level player (low enough to stand zero chance against you) who isn't engaging in hostile behavior does as well.
The fact that it' s on a PvP server affects things somewhat, in that arguably people who enjoy the aggressive and potentially hostile environment of a PvP realm might actually still enjoy the game even when their available gameplay consists of being corpse-camped or high-vs.-low one-shotted. However, I think that possibility is sufficiently unlikely - even for people who are on a PvP realm because they want to PvP, instead of being there e.g. because their friends are there)- that it doesn't affect the conclusion.
You're almost certainly right that a player-council system wouldn't really work well, though; I thought that had been argued out well enough in these comments that I couldn't really add anything constructive to it. I think it *could* in theory work, but in practice, the "idiots and assholes" of the population (and almost everyone is one or the other from time to time) would gum up the gears to the point where it would wind up being a problem instead of a solution.
vincentmagius Feb 8th 2012 5:16PM
If I understand LoL system correctly, it's just a council. Blizz could get a bunch of volunteers or anyone in good standings to vote. Once X number of votes are cast, a decision is made.
This could keep some of the impartiality in place. We'd just need some logs depending on case. It would also cut down on the tickets GMs have to handle. Give all the simple ones that involve etiquette to council. We'd just need the parsed logs. Chat logs. Gear worn by all members, names replaced by role for anonymity. Deaths. Healing done. Etc.
It would also let Blizz know how to code the game to protect the majority etiquette.
Tank wearing all PvP gear, except Druid? Code change to check for PvP gear in a majority of slots.
Tank wearing majority dps gear that has no enchants or gems? Code change to check for that.
We'll even get the answer to what the majority wants, Main>Off or Need before greed.
A lot of work and tweaking would need to go into the system, but it could be beneficial to both sides.
Lipstick Feb 8th 2012 5:21PM
Democracy always sounds fantastic until you realize that those nut jobs over there have the majority.
So while the idea of the players saying what should be done about offenses on the surface sounds intriguing, I have to remember that not everyone plays "on their best behavior" or even has a "your best behavior" attitude towards their conduct in a game.
I've filled a number of tickets over the years, from guys coming up to me while questing with a litany of foul come on's that would make Cher Blush, to a few people trying to purposefully prevent my guild from being able to recruit new members or progress in raid content.
I've even had tickets filled against me. My guild's name (Barbie Doll Beaches) and my character name (Lipstick) while on an RP realm were both reported for improper use, and flagged for a rename. In the first case I was forced to change it (copyright infringement, all that) and in the 2nd was able to petition to keep my name when providing evidence I did RP with that name (even got a sorry for the inconvenience response from Blizzard for my trouble).
In both cases, the thing which drove me nuts was I didn't know -who- had reported me, I just walked around with that vague sense that I had somehow pissed someone off and I wracked my brain for clues on who for quite a while before finally letting it go.
So in some cases I wish there were more transparency in the system. It would discourage people from filling petitions just to be mean. On the other hand, it would also prevent people from filling them who are being harassed for fear nothing would be done about it, and then their harasser would know who told on them.
The truth is there are no easy answers. People are always going to act in ways which don't meet your expectations, either in a good way or a bad way. Like that guy who acts like an in game seeing eye dog for a now sightless player -- that story moved me in a way I can't even explain. I'm not even a mean person, or bad to people, but that night after reading that, I logged in and went out of my way to help a few random strangers.
That was me on a great day. Me on a bad day is admitting to myself there have been times I've been a bit of a snob, or a little bit not so nice to people that I know in game, for whatever personal reason. So while yes there are times we should all legitimately be called to action for our misdeeds, I don't think such a system can exist unless it also proves to to reward those whom were called to action for good deeds.
So often we focus on the negative in our fellow man, without ever choosing to see the good things.
Gamaliel Feb 8th 2012 5:27PM
Blizzard should allow it's GMs time in their day to "free roam" servers and take action when needed against players miss-using chat channels, /y cuss words, or being disruptive.
This would be especially helpful to protecting the environment of the RP Servers.
Why should Blizzard have to wait for a player to report a character named "Uradouchebrah" who is in /trade or /localdefense talking about the benefits of Viagra.
A GM quietly floating around sees what we the players see and the behavior. The GM can then stop the player and have a chat with them, hand them a temp ban, and get the name changed.
Letting GMs be proactive would have a greater impact on curbing the behavior that most players find undesirable. This would also make players think twice about being a "jerk",
knowing a GM might be a witness to their actions.
Blizzard did it on Moon Guard and it helped (while it was being done).
I think the GMs do the best they can with the guidelines they have. I appreciate all they do for us.
I think Blizzard needs to change their policies and guidelines to do more to protect WoW from behavior that ruins the game experience of others.
In addition to letting GMs walk/float/fly around the servers, Blizzard should be holding players to a higher standard of behavior.
The game is rated " T " for Teen, but you have to be an adult to have an account (or an adult has to activate an account for a child). Why is immaturity and bad behavior not treated the same as harassment?
Common sense expectations, backed up by action, proactive action, on the part of Blizz, would be the ounce of prevention that might prevent a week's worth of GM tickets, for them to have to deal with.
Sabriye Feb 8th 2012 5:36PM
Keep in mind that the GM's have access to EVERYTHING, Chat Logs, in-game mail, so reporting them shows that someone did something wrong, so they have the means to confirm if the allegation is true or not.
It's not a bad system, but here's the thing. I'm a LoL player, and I was recently handed the first Leaver Rating. Why? Because there were a few instances where for one reason or another, I dropped game. But I realized the rules are there for a reason and I accepted what I got. And honestly, the ingame chat is eons more mature then that of Trade, or even Moon Guard.
There needs to be more like this in WoW, if not to spur the community into taking arms against the idiots and elitist jerks (not the website) who dominate Trade and LFR runs, but to at least make the general community a better place.
~Sabriye
rfranzoy Feb 8th 2012 7:37PM
I am a 85 level tank that only do pugs and after being insulted countless times and one time even spitted upon all i have to say is NO i dont want any kind of policing. I like the freedom of speech that is allowed in wow and i am a adult man so i like to think that i have skin tough enough to take some rude words. In reality i am more offended by people trying to create some kind of censorship to create this ilussion of a polite wow. I dont care for it and because there is no violent action between players and only words i dont think it merits harsher punishment that /ignore.
Kaesth Feb 8th 2012 6:36PM
Just to dispel a few of the misconceptions about the Tribunal (the LoL player-directed discipline system) and how it might related to WoW. One of the most important things about the Tribunal is that the player's votes don't necessarily result in action against the offender. A Riot employee (or employees) determine whether than has been an infraction substantial enough to constitution action against the alleged offender. Player's votes are taken into consideration, but they don't ultimately determine the outcome.
Another important thing to consider is how isolated the LoL experience is compared to WoW. The ENTIRE gameplay of LoL works basically like a battleground, only without people to replace people who go afk or leave. Maybe a better comparison would be random queue arenas, where you get stuck in a match with 4 other random people against 5 other random people, and if one of you dc's or leaves or is a complete jackass, your team just has to deal with that. You can't kick people. You can't replace them. You just have to deal with the enormous hindrance that places on your team.
The reason the Tribunal exists is because if you get a disruptive player on your League team, you are literally screwed for the next 20 minutes to an hour (depending on the length of the game). You can take no action against them. You have no recourse to improve their behavior. You have no ability to get rid of them or find a new player. Sometimes (SOMETIMES) teams can overcome disruptive players or afk'ers or people who rage quit and succeed, but it's obviously very rare. Further, no matter how much we may complain that the WoW community has been watered down by the advent of LFR and LFD and such, at least there IS a community. There aren't chat rooms in League or channels or anything else. The community is a largely amorphous concept where you randomly throw yourself into queues with 16 million other people to end up with your teammates and opponents.
All of this is to say that WoW has social and mechanical solutions to disruptive players. You can /ignore them. You can kick them from LFR/D/BGs or report them afk. If they are truly afk the game will remove them. And perhaps most importantly, when they're removed, you are automatically provided a replacement by the matching system. If someone is disruptive in a guild or team environment, players have control over their guilds and teams and can remove those people the moment they become more harmful than useful.
People can and are certainly annoying in WoW, but there are tools to deal with those people on a short and long term basis, and the persistent nature of the game community addresses that. In League, you're thrown into games with random people from a HUGE pool (much larger than the WoW pool) and the entire gameplay experience is based on how good/bad/polite/disruptive/awesome/douchey those random teammates are. It is essential in League that players are able to aggressively enforce bad behavior in games, because otherwise the entire random queue system would be so full of asshats it would be nigh unplayable. With its limited scope, League needs players to be able to be invested in disciplining the bad apples to keep the game healthy.
WoW isn't limited in scope. It's a huge game with hundreds of activities, a persistent social structure and no moba-style short term leveling/item building mechanics that prevent the game from providing you a replacement for disruptive or obnoxious players.
And as a final thought, in some ways WoW already has this. We know for sure that blizzard records how often players vote to kick, how often players are successful in kicking someone and how often they are kicked, and your ability to use those tools in LFR/D is constrained by your previous use (or abuse) of the random queue system. I don't particularly think that opening up all disciplinary review to players in WoW would be either useful or appropriate.
Shrikesnest Feb 8th 2012 6:59PM
So a karma rating won't work for various reasons. First of all, there are plenty of griefers who would just downvote everyone or pull other tricks to intentionally screw with the system. Secondly, a huge negative karma rating would be *positive* reinforcement to most griefers; it's basically a "this is how many people I've pissed off" scoreboard if there are no negative repercussions associated with it. So a system with downvotes is right out, and a system with just upvotes makes new players look bad and is easily ignored by griefers anyway.
So we need a different idea altogether. Here's my thought: an MVP system.
BASIC CONCEPT: At the end of a random dungeon run, the party gets to vote on who they think the best player was in the run. If a majority of the part picks the same person, that person gets a goodie bag (similar to the Satchel of Exotic Mystery). Here are the details:
1) The entire thing only happens in a party where at least 3/5 members queued alone and anyone who queued in a group isn't allowed to vote or be voted for. Queueing in a group with your buddies is protection enough against random jerks, and this is supposed to incentivize good behavior among strangers, not a further investiture into guild nepotism.
2) You can't vote for yourself, obviously.
3) You can only vote and are only elligible to receive the MVP award if you completed the dungeon. Ragequitting the group is already a form of protest, so this doesn't really apply in those circumstances.
4) You can abstain from voting, but if you do so (or leave group without voting) you don't get any gold/JP/VP/satchel from the dungeon run. If you feel very strongly that nobody else was any damn good, then fine, but you need to feel strongly enough that you'll put your points on the line to say so.
5) If there's a tie for most votes, then nobody wins a satchel. The rest of the party needs to agree in some kind of majority that you were exceptionally good.
6) Nobody sees how many votes they got or how anybody else voted. If you won, a satchel pops into your inventory. If you didn't win, nothing happens and you go about your business as normal.
7) When the list of names pops up for voting, it's randomized for every person, so that everybody sees a different list. This way, in groups with no standout exceptions or with just really lazy voters the name at the top of the list isn't most likely to win.
Let's get a few obvious objections out of the way:
1) "This isn't going to sway any hardcore griefers."
Haters are, indeed, going to hate, but hardcore griefers are a very small chunk of even the unpleasant players. The bigger chunk of jerks you meet in groups are impatient elitists or people with short tempers. I think the prospect of 100 extra gold, some gems/elixirs and a chance at a random pet or mount could really make people think twice about yelling at the newbie healer.
2) "People are just going to vote for the top DPS in every run!"
Not very likely. Your average random dungeon runner doesn't even have a meter installed. If anything, this would dissuade people from annoying the group by pestering them with a recount every pull.
3) "This is all going to go to tanks or healers."
This is my fiance's objection, but I don't think this is likely either. I think people are more likely to vote for the person who was nice to everyone and was giving the newbie encouragement rather than the person with the leetest skills, and in a Cata environment there's plenty of opportunity for an astute DPSer who's familiar with their class to save lives and obviously contribute to the team's victory.
So there you have it. I'd be fascinated to get some input on the idea.
Ianmis Feb 8th 2012 7:48PM
This may sound idealistic but one of the best ways to curb bad behavior in those capable of changing is to simply put them on ignore. In theory, over time their player pool of people to run with will dwindle and they may realize they are the problem. For those that can't or refuse to change, what does it matter. ;)
With things as they are now, your ignore list can fill quickly as you may have to ignore the same account of multiple toons, but hopefully the ignore account will become available soon and it will have a bigger impact. Again, this sounds a bit idealistic but I know I have ignored people from different realms on multiple toons of theirs due thier poor behavior.
Skye Feb 8th 2012 9:45PM
While the idea of a rating system in theory is a good idea I can see it being abused; and jerks will find a way to abuse it. Perhaps what could be done instead is Blizzard could use the vote kick system already in place and when people are being kicked often and the reason given is behavior then they can flag that player (this obviously would be dependent on the comments for reason given for kicking a person). Another option is if someone is being ignored by a larger than usual amount of the player base that could also flag a player as a potential problem.
Really there is no perfect solution but the problem has been getting progressively worse and even though Blizzard can't control player behavior something needs to be done. For a company like Blizzard it reflects badly and is likely to make new subscribers quit or not even bother if they hear bad things about the community (not to mention the older players who are quitting due to the increasing number of jerks).
Steve T Feb 8th 2012 10:18PM
Given the way some players in LFR behave (rolling Need on loot because "Blizzard lets me" despite having a better item in slot), I think any kind of system where responsibility is given to the player to rate other players is downright lunacy. When I play as a DPS Death Knight, people assume I'm going to be rubbish, even though I am correctly geared, gemmed & enchanted (the amount of players who are not is staggering), consistently top of recount, move out of fire, use interrupts etc. Hey, AFK Boomkin who rolled on Agility gear! Why did you vote me down? Because Blizzard let me...
fayth Feb 9th 2012 4:49AM
I really miss the days when Players were held accountable for their actions on servers by the community; I agree that we've lost this with the ease of name & server changes. There's still plenty of people behaving badly on their realms, but the community at large can't really do anything (such as shunning them from raids/groups) because the player will just transfer realms and continue being a jerk there. I feel that this actually makes it even more important to report players who repeatedly offend ( whether it's harrassing others, ninja looting, using racial/offensive slurs while trolling trade); as a community we can't do anything, but hope that when such players are reported that Blizzard will reprimand them properly. While having a system as LoL does seems tempting, in the end it could just as easily be used by the very players it's meant to deal with to create more problems (think about convicted criminals suing the people they victimized for whatever to get an idea of what I mean). In the end, the best way is to be diligent as a community and report repeat offenders and for Blizzard to strictly enforce it's policies.
On the whole Raid finder/Looking for group issue, it would make sense for Blizzard to keep track of people repeatedly reported for behaving badly in pugs and to possibly ban them for X amount of time from using those tools. Just a thought
Sinthar Feb 9th 2012 7:13AM
Hmmm interesting idea. Now how do you compare the Tank, and the healer and the dps to each other. Most of the time in runs, you are concentrating on what YOU are doing (well you should be). How would I compare in a run where the dps were all about the same, the tank managed to keep aggro (most of the time) and the healer kept everyone up? Especially how would people who DONT heal, or tank compare the skills? I would say that generally people do not know how good each person was skilled. I have seen tanks who didnt lose aggro once, pulled everything, and kept their health up (pallys and DKs mostly), whilst the healer started to complain that he was so BORED, cos noone was taking much damage. The healer could have been epic, but as the tank was too, it was hard to see. OFC the dps was excellent too, (we roflstomped quite a few heroics that day - all at breakneck speed).
Personally I feel only experenced and trustworthy players should earn the right to vote. See my post (below).
Sinthar Feb 9th 2012 6:55AM
Hmmm I dont think the idea as assumed at the moment is a good idea. Idiots and assholes being rated is one thing, but when they are doing the ratings too........
Why not take a leaf from the UK police force - to have more officers on the beat, but without having to pay for more, they have introduced a new type of officer. They have NO police powers, but have uniforms and some training. They are able to call in the true police for 'serious' issues, and provide support for them. Why cannot we adopt this idea for wow. Respected members of wow, known in some ways for their integrity, are made community GM's. They get to vote, or call in GM's (instantly!) for situations. If they are reported, they would lose their 'powers' with the potential of serious concequences if they are found to be misusing their powers. They then would provide the main eyes and ears for the GM's.
Personally I would suggest GM's and officer sort of ranks only to be even considered, but that would give effectively several thousand people who could vote/GM someone on most servers.
datgrl Feb 9th 2012 7:03AM
Player based ratings would make the game even more of a 'mob mentality'. As unfortunately time consuming as it may be, the company should be investigating claims instead of just taking someone's word for it. They could make changes to the way that people get reported to make the research a bit easier but that all takes time and money to do.
Ominous Feb 9th 2012 8:50AM
"If you have a problem with a player, you report them. "
You report "him" or "her". Individuals are obviously not plural.
"rule #1 was that you did not speak to anyone but an account holder regarding the status of their account. "
The status of "his" or "her" account. As above, Individuals are obviously not plural.
Pyre Feb 14th 2012 11:21AM
I'd disagree; while it's not, perhaps, following formal grammar rules, it is acceptable. While wikipedia is hardly the end-all, be-all of knowlege (or accuracy), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they is a pretty comprehensive article, which if tl;dr'ed, boils down to "Recognized writers have used they, them, themselves, and their to refer to singular nouns such as one, a person, an individual, and each since the 1300s.", and "Irrespective of the debate, when used, generic 'they' [(or its inflected forms, such as them or their)] can be seen to have an implication of indefinite reference (indefinite number or indefinite gender)."